PROOVING THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
When I was a youth I went to Catholic schools all the way up through college graduation. I grew up around nuns and priests and in high school and college most of my teachers were Irish Christian Brothers. I was steeped in Catholic Theology and Philosophy when in college and spent many a long hour at lunch in the cafeteria talking with my friends about philosophical issues. We were taught “Thomistic Cosmology” which is based upon Saint Thomas Aquinas’s proof for the existence of God. What I remember back then is that the proof of God seemed simple enough – the notion of the “unmoved mover” – and I really didn’t bother much with the logic because I accepted the existence of God as a natural reality. It was only after I got out of graduate school and went to work for IBM and established my own household and family that I began to take my college thinking further.
I realized that I did not understand life and death very well. I had read an incredible amount of information but had no tangible evidence for the existence of anything outside of what I had thus far experienced with my senses throughout my life. In August of 1967, while I was working as a Systems Engineer for IBM on Madison Avenue in New York City, I smoked my first joint of marijuana. From that point on my life shifted focus from the obvious to the truthful. My metaphysical focus shifted from Western culture to Eastern culture and I began to see strong cross-links between the two. I had already begun meditating in 1963 and now I expanded it to explore ZEN meditation and Hindu meditation. I began to take LSD regularly in August of 1968 and on March 26, 1969 I had an experience that I would describe as meeting God alone and hearing his voice. Needless to say all philosophizing about the existence of God had become moot and now my quest was to understand everything in the light of the real existence of the person of God. I was set on understanding how to explain reality to myself knowing God as I did which was as a benevolent father whose will was always love for me. I knew that God was all-good and I had the task of explaining how all the horror of human suffering could exist in a world created by a good God.
When people reject the idea of the existence of the Giver of Life – of God – they are rejecting their own negative concept of God which sees God in a monstrous light – as if he is the source of human suffering and is in fact waiting for the sinners to fall into Hell so that he can make them suffer for not following the ten commandments. I don’t blame someone for rejecting such a God because rightfully so God does not punish – ever. Unfortunately the real God, who is ever so sweet, is not even considered for rejection by atheists. This situation of conditioned thinking in the people of America to believe that if there was a God he is the God of the Jew – of law and punishment, placed me in an awkward philosophical position. I had to figure out how to not only prove that God exists but also to prove that the God that exists was not the God conceived by Moses but the God of the Declaration of Independence who created us equal to himself and endowed us with unalienable rights and placed no commandments on us but only gave us Life and freedom to pursue Happiness without any Jewish proscribed moral restrictions.
It’s a lot easier proving the existence of moral-free God who never condemns anyone than prove the existence of the God of the Jews. A moral-free God needs no morals to be God and so man only needs to love God to be free from all rules. If a man loves God completely he needs no rules because by his love he is being God.
The simplicity of the metaphysical proof of God is in accepting the absolute strict rules of logic and in accepting that all things are unique in the conditions of their existence, Each unique thing can be seen as itself when all the conditions of its existence are present and so it has a conditioned reality only known when all of its conditions are present. Since a thing is not a thing until all of its conditions of thingness are present this means that its conditions of thingness come into existence when the thing exists and not before. This means that the thing could not have brought itself into existence because it does not exist before itself. How then can you explain its existence beyond saying that it exists? Logically there has to be some outside force that is fulfilling conditions of thingness and responsible for bringing into existence the thing. Even if you were to say that everything has always existed you know that it isn’t true because just the fact that you can think that there was existence of no-time and no-space proves that you can’t discount the fact of the existence of existence itself completely free of matter. Existence is not dependent on matter but rather contains matter and time and space so it is logical to conclude that there is existence outside of everything. That Existence is simultaneous to my thought of it and therefore can be concluded to be the source of thoughts existing outside of physical reality. Consciousness itself then is the proof of the existence of God because thoughts alone exist intangibly in every human and transcend individuality. Concluding then that the consciousness that I experience exists outside of creation and is in fact the singular person of God I can then understand that my thoughts that God exists as an individual person outside of creation come from God’s consciousness which I realize is my consciousness. This is as much “proof” that God exists as you will ever get but take it from me by always looking in that direction of an all-loving God of Joy you will eventually experience the Holy Spirit of God in person and only then will you “believe” in God.
I should like to say that the only way you will come to understand the concept of God is by freeing your feelings from fear, doubt, anger and all “negative” influences and only allow yourself to feel feelings of wellness, joy and satisfaction. Then try to imagine what God would be like as you focus on feeling joyful. You will imagine a God that is so cool you will know his will is love and mercy and his kingdom is joy. When you think about God from a joyful feeling you know that God has no condemnation and no will of punishment; you know that God does not judge because he created all men equally perfect without flaw and thus has no need to judge what he has already made holy forever. In feeling joy you can know that God is the God of the Declaration of Independence who creates us equal to him and endows us with unalienable rights and no restrictions at all on those rights. There are no ten commandments in the Declaration of Independence but there is freedom without rules in loving the all-good God without reservations.
The people who say they do not believe in God are in a minority in America and technically speaking do not have unalienable rights because they deny the source of those rights which the majority of Americans accept as self-evident truth that that source is the God who raised Jesus from the dead. These atheists are immature in their thinking ability compared to great minds like Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. This self-centered narrow-mindedness is the product of unhappiness and is symptomatic of a condition that can best be medically described as “below normal cannabinoid levels”. This explanation for unhappiness is leading edge science in 2011 as scientists in every discipline of medicine and biology are recognizing the pervasive effect of the Endocannabinoid system over all other systems of the body. Most importantly the Endocannabinoid system controls mood
and balanced levels of cannabinoids maintain a balanced mood of feeling good. Low levels of cannabinoids cause an imbalance in the Endocannabinoid System which causes a feeling of unhappiness in your psychology which is the same as the feeling of hunger that your body experiences when it is low in food. Unhappiness is the body’s signal of hunger for cannabinoids. Ingesting cannabinoids from the Cannabis plant will re-establish the balance of the Endocannabinoid system shutting off the feelings of unhappiness as a result of filling up on cannabinoids.Finally I present this 30 minute video which is a summary of the metaphysical proof for the existence of God. It is a lecture by a Catholic Jesuit theologian named Robert J. Spitzer S.J., Ph.D. He does a fairly good job of presenting the logic of the proof but at one point he makes a completely illogical comment when he says that we could be in a lot of trouble if God forgot about us for an instance. He should not have said such a thing because it is impossible for God to not create. Anyway I suggest you watch the video a few times straight through without stopping because your mind will start getting used to the kinds of words and phrases Fr. Spitzer uses to communicate his truth.
